2006-12-13

Futureproofing

A good rule of thumb in document design is to avoid making assumptions about what won’t be there in the future, and a rule of thumb for software is to defer checking extension fields or values until you can’t any longer.

I like that principle. He goes on to describe what I have always hoped the Semantic Web would help us do:

On the Web, you need to be able to process messages from the future.

Hmm... Messages from the future. I wonder if that is like antimatter, which, according to one interpretation, is just matter travelling backwards in time.